Abstract

IIASA's Clearinghouse activity is oriented towards issues of interest among our National Member Organizations. Here, in the forefront, are the issues concerning the promise and impact of science and technology on society and economy in general, and some selected branches in particular.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most promising research areas. There are many indications that the long predicted upswing of this discipline is finally in the making. A recent survey had Nobel-laureates predict that the most influence in the next century will be made by computers, AI, and robotics. Already, at present, "expert" systems are emerging and applied; natural language understanding systems developed; AI principles are used in robots, flexible automation, computer aided-design, etc. All this will have an, as yet, unspecified social and economic impact on the activity of human beings, both at work and leisure.

It certainly takes interdisciplinary and cross-culturally based studies to enhance the understanding of this complex phenomenon. This is the aim of our endeavors in the field which is in excess of our duty to pass useful knowledge to our constituency. We think that IIASA, cooperating in this respect with the Austrian Society for Cybernetic Studies (ASCS), can develop some comparative advantage here.

This publication contains papers written by leading personalities, both East and West, in the field of artificial intelligence on the future and impact of this emerging discipline. We hope that the meeting, where the papers will be discussed, will not only identify important areas where the impact of artificial intelligence will be felt most directly, but also find the most rewarding issues for further research.